Issues in Integrating Science and Practice

1. Issues in Integrating Science and Practice Anthony Biglan Oregon Research Institute

2. A Tension Between Science & Practice • Practice is trying to affect public health • Science—at least according to its mechanistic traditions—is about developing models of how things work • Such models may or may not contribute to practice • Examples: Correlational model building in which no variables can be manipulated • Health Belief model

3. A Functional ContextualistApproach to Science • Goal: Prediction and influence • Focus on manipulable variables • Applied research is not subsidiary to basic research • It can contribute to basic understanding of the variables that influence a phenomenon

4. The Major Obstacle to Further Progress in Public Health • Understanding how to translate empirical evidence into effective practice in the “real world”

5. Ultimately, We Will Manage Public Health the Way We Do the Economy • Ongoing monitoring of all important indicators • Adjustment of policies and programs in light of ongoing data • Indications of these developments: • Monitoring at the national, state, and local levels • Synar • Accumulation of empirically supported interventions • Distinctions between science and practice will blur as practitioners are increasingly well-versed in science

6. If This Is True, Then We Need a New Model for NIH Funding of Research. • Less focused on hypothesis testing and more focused on erecting a permanent infrastructure of public health practices that will influence public health in a continuing fashion

7. This is why the Society for Prevention Research is calling for each NIH institute to fund research on effective delivery of the programs and policies funded by the agencies that support practice (e.g., CDC, ADAMHA, OJJDP, etc.)

9. From the NIH Perspective • Funded a multi-level analysis of community-, school-, and individual-level correlates of adolescent tobacco use • Three-year longitudinal tracking of tobacco use and factors thought to influence it, including: • School-based prevention programs • Access • Community programs • Family communications • Etc • Yield: Generalizable relationships between tobacco use and its influences

10. From the Public Health Perspective in Oregon • Comprehensive tracking of the entire range of adolescent problem behaviors through a modular questionnaire • Providing feedback to the state, counties, and communities that can guide practice • Broad support for continuing assessments

11. However • The contributions that OHT makes to the broad range of practice concerns in Oregon are not likely to be seen as relevant to the review of any proposal to continue OHT • Its contribution to understanding other youth problems will get it some points

12. As science is increasingly focused on how to get effective implementation in states and communities, it must be concerned—both as a matter of science and as a matter of practice—about the continuing viability of the structures that it helps to create

13. Integrating Science & Practice: Publications • Biglan, A. (1995). Changing cultural practices: A contextualist framework for intervention research. Reno, NV: Context Press. • Biglan, A., Ary, D.V., Smolkowski, K., Duncan, T.E., & Black, C. (2000). A randomized control trial of a community intervention to prevent adolescent tobacco use. Tobacco Control, 9, 24-32. • Biglan, A., Ary, D.V., & Wagenaar, A. C. (2000). The value of interrupted time-series experiments for community intervention research. Prevention Science, 1(1), 31-49. • Biglan, A. & Hayes, S.C. (1996). Should the behavioral sciences become more pragmatic? The case for functional contextualism in research on human behavior. Applied and Preventive Psychology 5:47-7. • Biglan, A. & Smolkowski, K. (2002). The role of the community psychologist in the 21st century. Prevention & Treatment, 5, article 2. • Biglan, A. & Taylor T. (2000). Why have we been more successful in reducing tobacco use than violent crime? American Journal of Community Psychology, 28(3), 269-302.